D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Remathilis]

"You can pick any flavor, as long as it's chocolate". Yesh, that's what you have to do sometimes.

Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors. How many of them are variants of chocolate?

I'm just saying that if you toss away a module, adventure hook or even the AP because the players went south instead of north, you are making things harder for yourself. A computer can spit out RNG-based encounters with infinite variables, but humans are good at taking a fun encounter with orc bandits on the road and turning into a fun encounter with orc mercenaries in the streets of the city if needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think Overgeeked has this one spot on. D&D was, first and foremost, a game about dungeon delving (then wilderness hexcrawling, then in theory domain and army leading) with a light overlay of the designer's favorite fiction. The game was set up as a challenge of resource management, caution, risk and reward, and deciding when to press your luck. That forged the game feel more than any specific genre of fantasy fiction. Exactly what that resultant entity retroactively looked like depends on how your group played and when you got into the game -- the artwork, in particular, did zig one way or the other (although not consistently. The 1e DMG, for instance, had all those 'flee for your lives' type art pieces right alongside goofy cartoons).

Late 1e/2e (and late BECMI) started trying to specify specific themes, motifs, and feelings onto the game, but even then it just played around the edges (and sometimes failed, depending on the person. I know lots of people really like TSR-era Ravenloft, but I always found it to be Halloween-party horror instead of actual horror).



10 wands of Cure Light Wounds and a half dozen scrolls of restoration were trivially easy to craft, broke the resource-use expectations of the game wide open, and were used or not used in anecdote-only percentage of gaming groups. If Tetrasodium insists that their group didn't play that way, there's no reason not to believe it, while at the same time huge numbers of people had harder-to-reign-in PC resources in 3e than 5e specifically because of it. I should say those, along with scrolls in general, as the party wizard also never had to spend daily resources (dedicated to encounter-ending effects) on the occasionally needed knock or spiderclimb because they too could have an arsenal of scrolls prepared.


Not to my knowledge. They have stuck their necks out on rules questions they supposedly thought DMs could handle on their own, but have been remarkably silent on questions of 'why' or 'what did you envision when...' type things. I'd imagine their response would be something like "go reread what we did say about 6-8 encounters and more importantly what we didn't say. Also, didn't we include multiple alternate recharge mechanics in the DMG specifically for people who were looking for different options?" but that's probably me just projecting.

That actually does fit with what I'd expect them to say, if they were going to engage with what is essentially a complaint.

 

[Remathilis]

According to the rules, the point of the 6-8 encounters day is to diminish resources. Its a game that mechanically revolved around that idea.

My personal theory was that 6-8 was the typical amount of encounters in a moderate-sized dungeon. Assuming about 20 rooms, you would fill about 6-8 with combats (from peons to boss monster), another 4-5 with tricks and traps, and the rest mostly devoid of harmful elements, but could still drain resources like casting detect magic. I think they also assumed more uses of resources in exploration and social pillars and that PCs would take short rests in the dungeon, but long rests outside.

The issue of course is that there is lots of D&D that isn't medium-sized dungeons, and the resource drain mechanism doesn't work as well in those scenarios.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My personal theory was that 6-8 was the typical amount of encounters in a moderate-sized dungeon. Assuming about 20 rooms, you would fill about 6-8 with combats (from peons to boss monster), another 4-5 with tricks and traps, and the rest mostly devoid of harmful elements, but could still drain resources like casting detect magic. I think they also assumed more uses of resources in exploration and social pillars and that PCs would take short rests in the dungeon, but long rests outside.

The issue of course is that there is lots of D&D that isn't medium-sized dungeons, and the resource drain mechanism doesn't work as well in those scenarios.

Which gets back to the tendency of D&D-oids to balance power on availability, so every situation isn't "hard burn our best spells and most useful limited use powers". In the end, you can't aim your game balance around that and a more measured use of powers at the same time.

 

[jasper]

It never mattered how long it took for hp to recover, since however long it took, it was always "We rest until our hp recover." "Okay, X time passes, on with the adventure."

ARGO. ARuDEGO. Assassin team to Pauls postion Assassin team to Paul's locatin. He has revealed the "TRUTH". PS. Dibs on his metal dice.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Hopelessly uninspiring to me.
Obviously I'll wait to know the content before deciding to pass/buy.
But starting from the cover it is a pass. Oversaturated fluo colors, furry blue cuddly creature, a fantasy version of a main street. No trace of antagonism, peril, exploration. It can ispire if you are looking for a tourist experience in a morocco bazaar. I really don't find any trace of adventure and epic. And frankly the quality of the illustration can be seen in the faces of the close-up characters: it is poor despite the theme. To tell it straight, this illustration doesn't contain anything I look for when I think about an adventure in a fantasy place. If I were an occasional observer I would classify it as an adventure book for my 8 year old daughter.

 

[Remathilis]

View attachment 153921

Hopelessly uninspiring to me.
Obviously I'll wait to know the content before deciding to pass/buy.
But starting from the cover it is a pass. Oversaturated fluo colors, furry blue cuddly creature, a fantasy version of a main street. No trace of antagonism, peril, exploration. It can ispire if you are looking for a tourist experience in a morocco bazaar. I really don't find any trace of adventure and epic. And frankly the quality of the illustration can be seen in the faces of the close-up characters: it is poor despite the theme. To tell it straight, this illustration doesn't contain anything I look for when I think about an adventure in a fantasy place. If I were an occasional observer I would classify it as an adventure book for my 8 year old daughter.

View attachment 153925

File under: literally judging a book by it's cover.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Something fun and colorful in a game that has like fifteen spells that throw rainbows at people?

Not on my watch.

 

[Minigiant]

1E Roll your pc and we begin. 5E THOUS MUSTS HAVES SESSIONS OS!

I think some of this coincides with the fact that 1e was created at a time when gamers didn't interact with game designers and didn't argue for preferences that hard. So there was no sense of assertiveness instill in D&D players to DMs

Now at the time of 5e, almost all new D&D fans are video game fans. And assertiveness to things you don't love is being nice. I be half of all new 5e fans over 13 have an angry post or online wishlist on a forum or Reddit post to a game developer or publisher.

 

[tetrasodium]

ARGO. ARuDEGO. Assassin team to Pauls postion Assassin team to Paul's locatin. He has revealed the "TRUTH". PS. Dibs on his metal dice.

Not really, he's pointing out something that was never in contention. What was important is that the time skip was long or dangerous enough that it couldn't plausibly be done in a closet or during the battle of helms deep